• Would you know where to turn?
• How to find a coach?
• How to see what you were doing?
• Remember the feedback you received?
• Could you visualize it?

Now you can easily answer these questions and many more related to improving your golf game with Golf Swing Exchange. Golf Swing Exchange or Golf Swing X is a new iiGrowth client. They are a client that we believe revolutionizes sports training by leveraging the new mobile platforms offered by Apple, Android, and Microsoft. Golf Swing X has a wealth of great ideas and innovations with respect to sports training and this is just the first.

Just type Golfswingx.com into your URL and you will enter a community where golf players can meet golf pros. That is just the beginning. Golf Swing X has launched in advance of Valentine’s Day and spring golf with an offer that includes a full month of golf coaching and more for $98. With this program, GolfSwingX has put together a package that includes the following:

• A complete swing analysis with Golf Swing X’s Director of Instruction, Stephen Moskal, who will provide a complete swing analysis.
• Weekly follow-up lessons, once a week for one month, through the Golf Swing X online portal and your private web page.
• 50% off on the next month of lessons.
• Free membership to the Golf Swing X on-line portal.
• Deals on selected golf equipment from GolfDom (Tyson’s Corner).

From our perspective, and we think yours when you take a look, Golf Swing X offers a new toolset that can help improve your game at breakthrough price points. Although the initial Valentine’s Day promotion is for the DC Metro area, the Golf Swing X service is an app available world-wide.

With spring just around the corner, Golf Swing X, is poised to help the casual and serious golf players make steady progress and gain a much improved understanding of the golf swing. All is documented in your account so that you can continue to learn and have a forum to store your ideas.

When we at iiGrowth are not working on strategy, finance, or operations, just look for us on the links with our new coaches at Golf Swing Exchange!

What we are doing is intervening into an existing system that does not measure everything we would like it to measure. Therefore, the deck is stacked against us whether we are trying to create a business in renewable energy, “green” products, “green” services or whether we are trying to make our traditional existing business a little more efficient and conscious with regards to what is happening in our communities, nation and world.

Finding leverage points to intervene in an existing system is critical to our success in business – here are several I came across while reading Donella Meadows years ago.

• The power to transcend paradigms.
• The mindset or paradigm out of which the system – its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters – arises.
• The goals of this system.
• The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
• The rules of the system.
• The structure of information flows.
• The gain around driving positive feedback loops.
• The strength of negative feedback loops relative to the impact they are trying to correct against.
• The length of delays relative to the rate of system change.
• The structure of material stocks and flows.
• Constraints, parameters, numbers.

I will be digging down as deep as I can into these leverage points in future posts.

Brett Sechrest

bsechrest@iigrowth.com

Aleks led the discussion and spoke about the American experience and his perspectives and then led the dialogue between the panel and the audience. The participants included the following:

Gustavs Plato; Gustav Plato is the CEO and founder of iiGrowth. He is a consultant and advisor to entrepreneurs and business leaders on driving business growth. Gustav guides iiGrowth clients in creating strategic change initiatives, accelerating execution through portfolio management, and identifying financing/resourcing alternatives. Gustav spoke about market entry to North American consumer, health, information technology, and financial markets. He participated remotely via video link from Washington, D.C.

In Riga, the panel was joined by Mārtiņš Rikšis – Managing Partner at Norda Aktivi Ltd. Previously he has held positions in Zaļās Gaismas Investīcijas, Riga City Council, and Riga Stock Exchange. His nearly 20 years includes screening more than 300 investment proposals. Through his investment vehicles he has made investments in technology, communications and media sectors.
Mrs Ieva Fatjanova, the Head of Corporate banking department at Swedbank also was on the panel. She was accompanied by representative from their Entrepreneurship Competence Centre.
The panel was rounded out by James Bowen.  He is a serial entrepreneur, professor at University of Ottawa and RTU Riga Business School, author and, most recently the co-founder of the internet accelerator hatchbrands. In addition to his insight into going global, James offered very practical knowledge regarding readying a company for financing.

Those who attended the session on January 17 will be able to have a private meeting with James when he is in Riga in March of this year.

Klāvs has expertise in working with private sector clients, not-for-profit clients, and has also led a technology startup. His skills include both server-side and client-side programming, SaaS (Software as a Service) development and graphical design. He has developed solutions for international clients such as the Latvian Chamber of Commerce in the Americas, American Latvian Association, IT companies, law firms, restaurants, construction companies, manufacturers, car dealerships, travel agencies, insurance brokers, as well as advertising and PR agencies.

Every once in a while Klāvs travels to the United States to establish contacts with American IT and web design professionals and companies, and is going to participate in an industry conference this summer.

In the next few months Klāvs is going to participate in establishing iiGrowth’s subsidiary in Riga.

Care for You provides complete Home Care Services, Senior Companions, and Professional Support Services for Independent Living. They are family owned and operated and have served families in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia since 1996.

Tee It Up Media specializes in online advertising and ad serving, web analytics, as well as social media and search engine optimization. They have a strong track record for helping their clients create 200% revenue lifts through advertising and enhance their rank for competitive keywords on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Tee It Up helps clients create great content, establish and deploy effective site structures and build links. Tee It Up helps its clients in all three areas to maximize their position on the search engines for relevant organic traffic. If you want your content to go viral, then Tee It Up Media has experience working with publishers to promote their content to large social media hubs for immediate traffic.

I suggest you view the following video to learn how Riga continues to evolve its innovation ecosystem.  People, creative spaces, companies, and academia come together.  Riga is different.  It is a place and set of values that promotes innovation through partnership.

IT House is a company worth knowing!

IT House was founded by Gunars Grundstoks and Valdis Pornieks.  Gunars and Valdis are sought out idea generators and innovators.  Their approach is to link technology to business goals.  Having started IT House they have also started Rent Mama (an innovative auto rental service offering low priced leasing options for the price conscious traveler and a Software as a Service (SaaS) portal for local & independent car rental companies to offer their services to consumers), numerous web based applications leveraging Ruby on Rails, and more recently were catalysts in forming Tech Hub Riga.
They have established a strong foundation in the Latvian market and have decided to offer their innovative software development services to a larger international client base.  They continue to grow their business base in Latvia and globally.
I interviewed Gunars Grundstoks, CEO of IT House, just prior to the holidays.  Gunars shares insights about 2012.

What sparked you to start IT House?  How is IT House different?

We have worked on different projects before starting IT House and we saw that we can give added value to our clients by leveraging IT (Information Technology), therefore starting our own company was the logic next step.

Since visiting the United States in 2010, what has IT House been doing?  What is new?

As we have grown out the Latvian market we set our focus on global projects. Since our visit to US, IT House has tripled the amount of international projects we are working on, and increased the development capacity to satisfy the increasing demand.

You recently co-founded TechHub Riga, how did that come about? What is the vision/expectations for Tech Hub Riga? How is that important for US market?

For us TechHub Riga is a social based responsibility to help local startup community, to build new business in global markets. TechHub Riga will gather the best startups in one place and those people who will “live” there will help each other. It will be also a great network opportunity between broader markets and countries.

What is the next big idea(s) in IT?  How will you/IT House participate in this?

We are very closely partnering with companies who are the best in the areas of electronics, design and mobile development, so that we can offer IT solutions that reach not only within the web but also connect to the real world. For example IT House has developed software and our partners the hardware for smart metering solutions for utility companies and end-users to provide usage statistics and services like leakage detection and location. This solution is already deployed in several cities in two countries and new deployments are coming every month.

What should businesses/your potential clients be doing this year to gain advantage from ITs Big Ideas?

NFC (Near Field Communications) is coming up. All Google phones are already NFC enabled, which allows the holder to interact with other electronic devices. This brings the world a big step closer to the ubiquitous network. The applications for this technology are countless. I.e. in education platforms where teachers can prepare tasks to be done outside the classroom and follow the progress of students without interfering or in working environments tracking of business related events will become viable due to reduced hardware costs as most users already have or will have an NFC enabled Smartphone.

Founded in 1933, Dilworth Paxson conducts a broad and diverse regional law practice representing non-profit foundations, a wide variety of clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to closely-held businesses, governmental entities and individuals.The firm has 112 attorneys with offices in Philadelphia, PA; Washington, D.C.; Harrisburg, PA; Cherry Hill, NJ; Neptune, NJ and Wilmington, DE.

Dilworth Paxson has many practices. Dilworth Paxson brings iiGrowth clients expertise in structuring and carrying out complex and sophisticated transactions, both domestic and international. Dilworth Paxson provides daily guidance to clients on matters involving business governance, commercial dealings, regulatory issues, and business relationships. In addition, they are seasoned in the intricacies of patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, and other IP laws, and also have lawyers whose experience spans related fields, such as corporate law, tax, finance, litigation, and international law.

The firm is led by Iveta Valtenberga, who has more than 15 years of experience in the fitness segment. Together with the Aklase team they are well known in the Ventspils region for creating innovative and customized fitness progams. Iveta has adapted this innovation to include the use of new technologies such as oxygen technology.

iiGrowth has been engaged by Aklase to support their expansion efforts and has provided guidance on US market entry, the US fitness segment, and supported the development of Aklase marketing collatoral.